All posts tagged HIMYM

Situation comedies are fun shows that usually last 30 minutes and give us a shot of funny during our days. There was a huge boom of them back in the 90’s but some, of quality, can still be found today. The premise is that a group of characters share a common space, like a home, bar or office. Then these characters tend to spew jokes as part of the dialogue that, for them, will hopefully turn into cultural jokes. Most of them are also filmed in front of a live audience. Here are my top 5 sitcoms:

5. Family Guy – The only animated one to make my list, Family Guy can still be really funny. I think maybe it has lost its way a little bit, but back when it started it was pretty edgy and very funny. Maybe I remember it through the eyes of a college kid, but I certainly remember laughing a lot. A couple things Family Guy does super well is whenever someone falls, the way the bodies drop cracks me up and of course, the Star Wars episodes are spot on. It is cool that a nerd made a TV show that allows for good nerd references.

4. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air/Saved by the Bell – Both of these shows make it due to my childhood. No two shows would be watched more in my house or with more consistency than these two shows. Saved by the Bell especially. That show was on at 6am every morning in our house and my sisters and I (and even my father, as much as he doesn’t want to admit it) would sit around and eat breakfast before school and watch that show. Fresh Prince was just the opposite, we would watch that as soon as we got home from school and when homework started. Both shows provided powerful moments, funny moments, and even a star or two. Thank you for shaping my childhood!

3. The League – As an avid fan of fantasy football, this show hits home in the best possible way. The show follows a group of friends through their lives as well as their League, which is a Fantasy Football league made up of them and some other people you never see. With cultural slang (eskimo brother, sorbet patting) and appearances by real football players (Antonio Gates is still awesome) and real actors (Jeff Goldbloom is hilarious) this show has successfully converted itself from a “must watch” to a “rewatchable” show for me.

2. How I Met Your Mother – Perhaps the best traditional sitcom still on the air today, this show follows a group of characters through flashbacks told to the main character Ted’s kids by Ted in the future…get all that? So the premise is that Ted is telling his kids the story of how Ted finally, through all these girls and trials and tribulations, finally found his wife and the kid’s mother. Now the show has been on for like seven years and we still don’t know who the damn mom is, so its probably shit or get off the pot time with this show, but in the mean time it has been a wonderfully funny seven years. Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) certainly steals the show, but the ‘real’ moments with Robin are awfully powerful and the relationship between Marshall and Lilly is perhaps the strongest relationship on television. The story telling of the show is one of its strong points and it does a brilliant job. Now, if only Ted would stop being such a dork and find a girl already…

1. Seinfeld – Well, this should come as no surprise. Perhaps the best sitcom of all time, Seinfeld is a show that can still be seen about 25 times a day on 14 different channels (those numbers are made up, but probably pretty accurate). The show follows for friends in what should be their mundane lives as they live in New York. But these four friends happen to be some of the worst people ever, finding things to complain about over and over. Cultural significance of this show is so great, some times people who have never seen the show utter lines or labels from the show. Things like “no soup for you” , the contest, “man hands” or calling Wayne Knight “Newman” no matter what he is in are a few examples. Hell, we call my uncle John George Costanza all the time for his similarities. Seinfeld also has one of the highest rewatchablility ratings for any show I have ever seen. 76 million people watched the finale, which meant that without TiVo or online downloads, 58% of the people watching TV that night were watching this little sitcom. Well done Seinfeld. Well done.

This is a billboard right out side my apartment. Not only does it show the popularity Seinfeld still has, but it also has an Aids Walk banner right in front of Kramer…If you have seen the show, you will get the joke.

What are your favorite Sitcoms? Write up a list and leave it in the comments!